Just a few months ago, the four-story monolith located in the heart – or shall we say brain – of El Segundo’s aerospace corridor was most assuredly a place where the highest-ranking U.S. military officials held secret meetings about espionage and other sensitive intelligence.

But if the Wiseburn school district has its way, the building formerly leased by Northrop Grumman will, in just three years time, become a comprehensive high school complete with bustling hallways, college-prep classes, athletic events, prom, school plays, cliquey squabbles and all the other trappings of the American tradition.

Regardless of where the school is ultimately situated, Wiseburn High School will be the South Bay’s first newly minted comprehensive high school to come online in half a century. (The most recent addition was Rolling Hills High, built on the Palos Verdes Peninsula in 1964 and renamed Peninsula High in 1991.)

Last week, the Wiseburn school board took a major step toward converting the office building into a school by approving the environmental studies and closing escrow on the $46 million sale of the property at 201 N. Douglas St. near El Segundo Boulevard. “When this process is done, we will have one of the best high schools in the nation,” asserted Wiseburn school board member Susan Andriacchi. “I’ve been in this community for 17 years and this has been a topic of conversation since I came, and before, I’m sure. “

But the Wiseburn school district might still be one fight away from the finish line.

The city of El Segundo, which stands to lose a significant chunk of tax revenue over the deal, is raising stiff objections, and could very well file a lawsuit. The city has 30 days from Wiseburn’s March 21 approval of the project to do so. El Segundo City Manager Greg Carpenter, who submitted a letter of opposition, didn’t return multiple calls for comment.

If the Wiseburn school district prevails in occupying the building, which is across the street from the Los Angeles Air Force Base, the resulting wow factor is expected to be significant.

For starters, the edifice is large enough to fit one and a half soccer fields on each of its four floors. The school district would use only about two-thirds of the building and lop off the rest, although it would add a separate auditorium and a gymnasium.

Preliminary renderings of Wiseburn High depict a futuristic building with plenty of natural lighting, an abundance of glass and a square atrium cutting down the middle of all four floors.

“You might have a private conference – nobody is going to be able to hear you, but they are going to see you,” said Tom Johnstone, the school district’s superintendent. The school will be designed by Gensler, one of the largest architecture firms in the United States. Gensler’s credits include the Shanghai Tower in China – which, when completed, will be the second tallest skyscraper in the world. Gensler also has been selected to design Farmers Field, the proposed football stadium in downtown Los Angeles.

Johnstone said Gensler’s own downtown Los Angeles headquarters, with its open layout, glassy interior and ample natural lighting, offers a glimpse of the spirit in which Wiseburn High will be built.

“You can see exactly what everybody is working on,” he said. “It creates its own synergy and energy. “

Since its inception in 1896, the Wiseburn School District has been a K-8 entity located in the Hawthorne neighborhood of Holly Glen and unincorporated Los Angeles County neighborhoods of Del Aire and Wiseburn. The district also extends into the aerospace and commercial district of El Segundo, which has zero residents but is prized by government entities for its extremely lucrative tax base and bonding capacity.

For decades, Wiseburn residents have been keen on converting their school system into a K-12 unified school district with a comprehensive high school.

The district is already home to a twin pair of charter high schools – Da Vinci Science and Da Vinci Design – but these are specialized learning centers that do not offer all of the features of a traditional high school experience. (Both schools will relocate to the new school.) Wiseburn High, by contrast, will have performing arts extracurriculars and sports teams that will compete in California Interscholastic Federation leagues, better known as CIF.

And, Wiseburn officials say, the new school would keep students from scattering to the wind after and before junior high school.

This dissipation happens because Wiseburn families tend to avoid the two comprehensive high schools to which they are assigned – Hawthorne and Lawndale – in the Centinela Valley Union High School District.

“Centinela Valley hasn’t provided the education we’re looking for for our kids,” said Wiseburn school board member Israel Mora. “Since the 1980s, their quality of education has dropped tremendously. They are trying to bring it back up, but it’s a struggle for them. “

As for the objections lodged by the city of El Segundo, they have centered on the usual technical quibbles over parking, noise and traffic. But Johnstone said it’s largely about lost tax revenue.

He added: “From our perspective, we really want to work things out with the city; we want to get a win-win. “

Tax records show that the property owners paid $482,000 in taxes last year; it’s unclear how much of that went to the city of El Segundo. Because schools, churches and parks do not pay property taxes in California, if the sale to the Wiseburn school district goes through, the amount will shrink to zero.

To Wiseburn officials, the property is a perfect fit. The multifloor building is stacked on a 2-acre footprint, leaving ample room for parking and athletic fields. Its proximity to aerospace companies will smooth the relationship the district already enjoys with aerospace engineers who volunteer as tutors.

But the city of El Segundo isn’t Wiseburn’s only obstacle. The site also harbors an underground plume of methane gas that is trapped beneath the parking lot, probably the result of an underground Chevron oil field. Even though the plume is about 100 yards from the structure, the gas – whose concentration exceeds the acceptable limits in one area – needs to be diluted via a venting system in order for the district to appease the state Department of Toxic Substances Control.

Given its history, the building itself exudes a certain intrigue. Johnstone said it contained several rooms that existed primarily to host classified meetings – “top secret type stuff.”

With the building’s handy proximity to not only the Los Angeles Air Force Base but also the base’s research-and-development arm, the nonprofit Aerospace Corp., it’s easy to imagine high-level, closed-door meetings about drone strikes or missile systems.

“It’s exciting to be on Douglas Street,” Johnstone said. “That’s where it all started.”

The building was leased by Northrop until January, when the roughly 1,000 employees packed up and moved into another space owned by the company in Redondo Beach.

“The whole sequestration thing was probably weighing on their head,” Johnstone surmised, referring to the automatic federal spending cuts that took effect March 1.

Also mysterious is the owner of the building. On Jan. 13, it changed hands twice in one day, from the opaquely named Douglas Property Holdings Co., LLC to Continental Development Corp. “” owned by Richard Lundquist, one of the wealthiest landowners in El Segundo – to Wiseburn. Even Johnstone doesn’t know exactly why the transaction took place in this fashion, or who “Douglas Property Holders” really is.

In any case, the $46 million to purchase the site and the estimated $32 million it will take to build the school both come from an $87 million construction bond approved overwhelmingly by Wiseburn voters in 2010. A good 80 percent of that money comes not from residents but the businesses in the El Segundo commercial district – a section that includes, in addition to aerospace companies, other corporate behemoths like Mattel, Xerox and AIG.

This corporate corridor is the chief reason all four of the district’s schools are nearly brand new.

“We’ve been abundantly blessed, and we know it,” Johnstone said. “We want to develop the next generation of engineers. “

Johnstone is hoping the school will open in the spring of 2016. That means today’s high school freshmen stand a chance to spend their last couple months of high school in a brand new school.

“We just think it would be an added bonus and a wonderful parting gift – to be in a brand-new, world-class high school for the last part of their senior year,” he said.